


walking among the living

by wearetheonlyone



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Drabble, Gen, Hurt, Reunions, also the title is rubbish and doesnt link at all but go off it sounds cool, idk where this came from and it wasnt meant to be like this but you know what im doing it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-16 08:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18687679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearetheonlyone/pseuds/wearetheonlyone
Summary: "Say something nice."





	1. Occurrence

“Are these your new pets then, Doctor?” she had asked. Her accent remained thick and rich yet soft on the inside like a cup of soothing tea in the afternoon. “This one looks a tad old for you though, doesn’t he? Bit grey.”

“You seem to forget the two of us have had grey hair in the past, I’d like to think mine was better than Graham’s- no offence, Graham, of course,” the Doctor has replied hastily, excitement seeping into her words but her tone remained calm, sending a sympathetic nod to said man at the end of her sentence.

“None taken, Doc.”

“Dodging the question as per usual, I see. Fine,” she strolled across the console room, heels dragging and tapping against the hard metal. Her gaze settled on Ryan and Yaz standing nearby each other, and she crept over behind them like a predator. “Which one of these two do you have your eye on?”

“Missy…” warned the Doctor, her eyebrows sinking down over her eyes slightly. She was watching as the other woman’s fingers dancing against her companion's shoulders, nails tapping against the collars of their jackets.

“You can relax, Doctor, that life is behind me. I am a changed woman now- I have a metal straw and everything when I come to bother you on Earth,” she replied, her hands coming down to rest on her hips as she stared over the shoulders of the humans.

“You said the same words on Mondasia. I had trusted you and you betrayed my trust- step away from the two of them. Now,” demanded the Doctor.

Reluctantly, the woman moved away, her head looking down slightly in submission and both of her hands plain on display in the air. “I was coming back to you on Mondasia but I had some… _complications_ which made me coming back a lot harder than I had originally anticipated.”

“What type of complications? All I remember is you leaving me to die, on the verge of regeneration surrounded by Cybermen. If anything, I was dealing with complications while you escaped,” snapped the Doctor. She could feel the tension building in her shoulders but she had to vent now, if she didn’t she never would.

“What was it you always said? Timey-wimey, was it?” she asked, nearly skipping around the console room as though nothing was happening.

“ _What happened, Missy?_ ” demanded the Doctor.

She sighed. “If I must say...I died, Doctor,” she paused, glancing at the other woman’s face before continuing. “And before you ask- no, it was not regeneration. I died, as in both my hearts stopped, bury me in a grave dead.”

“You.. you can’t have died- you’re right here. I- you’re not lying to me, are you? Don’t do this to me, Missy, not again-”

“Not a lie, my dear Doctor. I really did die that day, just as you did,” she replied, finally pausing in her place.

The Doctor’s mouth slammed shut, teeth crashing against each other in her mouth. “I-...leave, Missy. Don’t do this to me,” she begged.

Frowning, Missy strolled towards the doors to the ship. They had flung open as soon as she had approached near them, the light seeping in through the doors reflected on Missy’s face- showing off her high cheekbones and sharp jawline but also proving how pale and corpse-like she appeared. Her eyes were drained of colour, hollow and empty yet there a faint glimpse of fire that sparked in her soul, and her veins were bright against her pale skin, nearly appearing like a ghost in the bright light from the sun.

Her hand fell gently against the doors, her back to the room but she turned her neck so she could look at the Doctor one last time. “Say something nice.”

Laughing gently under her breath, the Doctor looked up at her. “Not this time.”


	2. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise, bitch, bet you thought you saw the last of me

The Doctor awoke in a sudden, jerky movement her breath buffing out in front of her in heavy weighted gasps of air. Her throat contracted around the air pumping through her, nostrils flaring in the empty room as she could only sit and stare while her pupils darted to every corner of the room. She was alone, the room was empty was the mantra she chanted in her head over and over again in her consciousness but it was outmatched by the pure, unadulterated fear coursing through her veins.

Slowly, her mind faded into control again. Her hands eventually ceased their horrified trembling and released their tight, knuckle-whitening grip on the covers of the bed. The pounding in her ears slowly resided into a nagging ache in the back of her mind, and she could feel the majority of her tension slip from her shoulders and vanish into the depths of the ship, not to be seen again until later.

As her senses approached her again, the sticky, pungent liquid was clear across her skin, seeping into the oversized pieces of clothing she had worn as her pyjamas. She knew it wouldn’t be right of her to meet her fam while she looked like death herself (and smelt like it too) and was soaked in sweat from head to toe. Unwillingly, she peeled the damp duvet from her body, her bare skin being assaulted by the cool air of the room and the hairs on her body all pointed up like soldiers.

The water from the shower was steaming, fogging the mirrors and tiles of the bathroom walls, which was exactly how she had liked it- the burn from the scorching water was like a punishment on her skin, reminding her she was alive while other, better people were not. When she left the shower, her skin was red, puffy and burnt in some areas but she simply shrugged her coat over her shoulders, covering the flaking skin from view.

When she strolled into the console room, her hair was still damp and curled at the ends naturally but the sight didn’t bother her. She hadn’t been concerned about vanity since her tenth regeneration and her hair didn’t form waves then. The room was still empty when she entered, meaning it was still fairly early for her humans- or it was late and she had overslept but she decided it was more likely the former.

Remembering the heavy bags she caught a glimpse of in the mirror, the Doctor opened one of the compartments in the ship console and pulled her welding mask over her eyes. Her goggles were sat in the same box but they revealed too much of her face to shield her emotions from her companions that had yet to wake.

Beneath the console, she continued to fiddle with and rewire different parts of her ship, mainly the ones she had overloaded with regeneration energy previously. Last time she tried to get away without fixing them, her ship was not happy with her- and she couldn’t risk ice showers again, not after the time she visited the artic and had to shower in the cold. 

She was so immersed in the intricate wiring of her ship that she hadn’t listened out for the footsteps of her companions behind her, becoming louder and louder as they approached closer to the room. A hand placed gently on her left shoulder. Instantly, she leapt into action, her hands flew out from beneath the console and pointed towards the person in a less threatening form of martial arts- at least she hadn’t been holding any tools.

Her eyes settled after a moment, focusing on the person in front of her through the small gap in the mask she was wearing. “Doctor, calm down, it’s just me. It’s Yaz,” she had cooed softly as she noticed the tension in the older woman’s shoulders.

A second paused before anyone continued to speak. “Blimey, Doc, you sure gave me a scare there!” joked Graham. He was holding a travel cup of what was either coffee or tea, depending on how he had slept the night before. “Anyway, as I was sayin’, I was the weirdest dream last night, son.”

“What happened in it? ‘Cause I had one too. It was proper weird,” responded Ryan. The sleepiness was still rich in his voice.

“Well, basically, all I remember from it was that we were in the console room here, as normal, about to head off to some planet the Doc rambled about. You an’ Yaz was stood there-” he continued, gesturing vaguely to the other side of the console room. “- and the Doc was stood near where she’s sat now.”

“That’s not that weird, Graham,” piped in Yaz.

“Yeah, I’m not done yet, love. Then there was some weird Scottish woman who was talking to the Doc. Then she said that she was dead, and the Doc was really upset with her about some Cyber what-its that had done somethin’-” he had continued but he was sharply cut off at the climax of the story by Ryan.

With his eyes wide, Ryan spoke nearly excited but also disturbed. “Then she asked the Doctor to say something nice, right?” he asked.

“Yeah! That was it! Hang on, how’d you know she asked the Doc that?” replied Graham, confused.

“‘Cause that happened in my dream too!” he explained. 

“Wait a minute,” chimed in Yaz. “that’s what I dreamt of too.”

There was a crash from where the Doctor was sitting. Her helmet had been torn from his head, leaving her hair in a messy, tangled mess atop her head. The look of sheer horror and genuine surprise stamped on her face tore a hole in the hearts of the companions staring at her with a look of shock that was easily flattened by her horror.

“I’m so sorry…”

The look of shock on their faces quickly switched to become confusion once again, and at the breathy, fearful tone from the Doctor, they felt fear in the pit of their stomachs. “Sorry ‘bout what, Doctor?” asked Ryan.

“Yeah. We all just had the same dream ‘cause of some alien coincidence, nothing to be sorry about there,” added Graham.

The Doctor shook her head rapidly. “No- it wasn’t a coincidence.” She swallowed. “That was my nightmare that you had to watch- the TARDIS must have linked us together by accident. I’m sorry.”

“Nightmare?”

She nodded, tears forming at the corner of her eyes. For as long as she had lived, she always hated crying, never wanting to wallow in the sadness, never wanting to feel the pain that made her cry and never wanting to lose the people that made her smile. Quickly, in an awful attempt to hide her tears from her friends, she slapped her hand over her eyes but that couldn’t hide the tremors rippling throughout her body.

“Woah, Woah, Woah, Doc-” began Graham but his words cut off as soon as he realised he had no idea how to comfort her.

Luckily, Yaz stepped in almost immediately. “Who was she, Doctor?”

All of their hearts nearly broke when the Doctor removed her hand from her eyes, showing off her puffy, tearful eyes to them as her eyebrows creased upwards. “She was my best friend- or frenemy as you lot would say - since I was a child… and- I- and now she’s gone and it’s all my fault-”

“Hey, Doctor,” cut off Yaz, interrupting her oncoming depressive spiral. “It wasn’t your fault, okay?”

“It was. I was to focused on trying to not regenerate that I didn’t look out for her- and now I’ll never get her back,” replied the Doctor, choking through her sobs. Her head dropped down, hanging low and swaying as her body shook from the force of her tears.

Instinctively, Yaz wrapped her hands around the woman’s trembling form. It was the first time she had engaged in physical contact with her, aside from being pulled from danger and it felt strangely too intimate but also wrong at the same time. But, despite this, the Doctor shuffled into her form more- only slightly to press her sobbing face into Yaz’s jacket in an attempt to hide from what she was feeling. Yaz, on the other hand, was signalling for Graham and Ryan to join in on this hug- which they did, reluctantly.

The three of them sat, awkwardly but content, around the crying alien, unsure at how to comfort someone who experienced more grief than all of them combined in such a short amount of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fact that i dont know how to comfort people really showed in this ending damn

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i wrote this 20 minutes, unedited, unproofread and i dont actually know how to write missy and i also dont know what this is but you know what its content, even if its shitty content its still content in this drought  
> (this can be taken as missy/13 which is what i wanted to do but like idk how to write love)


End file.
